Hi, i am quite a beginner learner, and i have been teaching myself the basics from pretty much here , there and everywhere (i actually start the Passport courses at my local University soon =). Anyway, with where i am currently at with my kanji, kana and grammar i thought it might really help to have a stab at some of the readings on englishjapaneseonlinedictionary.com. However, they don't provide the english translations, so i was wondering if someone could just take a look at what ive figured out, and make any corrections here and there.i'd really appreciate that =). so here's what i last worked on. i think i understand the gist of what is going on mostly, but the grammar is where i get a little lost. my translations in brackets

私はの ホストファミりーの家には 十一人人が住んでいます (eleven people live in the house of my host family)みんなとてもかっこよくて かわいくて いい人です (everyone is very stylish and cute)みんな外であそぶのが大好きなので 夏はキャンプにいったりみずうみに行ったりします (because everyone loves playing outside, in the summer we go camping and to the lake)今週もまだ春なのみ 男の子たつがみずうみにキャンプに行ってしまいしました (the boys went to camp at the lake this week even though its still spring)休みの日も子でも達が朝からうるさいのでゆっくりねむれません (even when it is a day off, the children are very noisy so its hard to have a lie in (or sleep-in))だから私は休みの日も早く起きています (therefore, even on my day off i get up early)はれた日はこうえんで やきゅうをしたりサッカーをしたりします (if it is a bright day then we go to the park to play football)

i've written the japanese precisely how it was on the webpage, even though i think i know some of the kanji that should preferably be used

squarezebra wrote:There are a few small typing errors in some of the sentences: I'll correct in red.私の ホストファミリーの家には 十一人人が住んでいます (eleven people live in the house of my host family)みんなとてもかっこよくて かわいくて いい人です (everyone is very stylish and cute and good people)みんな外であそぶのが大好きなので 夏はキャンプにいったりみずうみに行ったりします (because everyone loves playing outside, in the summer we go camping and to the lake)今週もまだ春なのに 男の子たつがみずうみにキャンプに行ってしまいしました (the boys went to camp at the lake this week even though it's still spring)休みの日も子ども達が朝からうるさいのでゆっくりねむれません (even when it is a day off, the children are very noisy so its hard to have a lie in (or sleep-in))だから私は休みの日も早く起きています (therefore, even on my day off i get up early)はれた日はこうえんで やきゅうをしたりサッカーをしたりします (if it is a sunny day then we go to the park to play football)

Looks pretty good. May I suggest capitalization of your English sentences however; it makes it much easier to read...

Last edited by becki_kanou on Fri 05.01.2009 12:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Ah, thank you very much for pointing those out. I can't believe I missed "sunny"; that's an easy bit. The whole thing took me about 4 hours to work out. Its very slow going, but I feel like I am learning quite a bit by investing in them. I think what makes it harder is that there isnt enough kanji. I find long strings of kana difficult to separate. I understand now what people mean when they say that kanji makes reading easier.Apologies about the lack of capitalization; I'll make sure I put more effort into that next time.

Oops .... I copied the japanese straight from the source I translated from, but it seems I can't even do that without making mistakes. The source I used definately writes 十一人人が住んでいます; would it have a different meaning if it was written 十一人の人が住んでいます?

You did very well! 8D I do have a couple of corrections for the last sentence:

• The "if… then…" construction is not present in the Japanese sentence. It seems to me that it's meant to be more of a general sentence than one showing cause-effect relationship. (I hope that makes sense…)• The "-tari, -tari" conjugation (やきゅうをしたりサッカーをしたり) is basically what you use to say something along the lines of "doing things such as ___ and ___."

Therefore, I think it would be more accurate to translate the sentence this way:

はれた日はこうえんで やきゅうをしたりサッカーをしたりしますOn sunny days we (will) do things such as play baseball and soccer/football in the park.